


The Hunt

by scribbles_in_the_margins



Series: Enemy Inquiry [1]
Category: Little Nightmares (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Child Death, Dehumanization, How Do I Tag, Kidnapping, Little Nightmares II Spoilers, Minor Character Death, Pre-Canon, Tags Are Hard, Taxidermy, a child gets taxidermied, how do i rate fics i feel like i never do it correctly, i think that applies here kind of?, it's little nightmares are you really shocked, rated Mature just to be safe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 11:14:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29758794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribbles_in_the_margins/pseuds/scribbles_in_the_margins
Summary: He's dead. Or at least, he thinks he should be dead.Or: a look into the Hunter before the main events of the game (and why he didn't kill Six).
Relationships: The Hunter & Six (Little Nightmares)
Series: Enemy Inquiry [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2187156
Comments: 10
Kudos: 49





	The Hunt

He’s dead. Or at least, he thinks he _should_ be dead.

He wakes next to a TV, in the middle of the woods, a headache pounding against his temples and his breath hanging in the air. The sound is wrong even in his own ears, more of a rasping, desperate gasp for air than it is actual breathing, akin to more of a wounded animal than a man. His body feels stiff from head to toe, heavy, and when he looks down at himself he finds stuffing in open wounds where there should be blood and muscle.

His jacket hangs open slightly, ruffled, dirty. Torn for some reason he can’t remember.

He shifts, sitting up and rubbing at his head. He finds a hole there, leaking, though he doesn’t know why or when it happened.

A bag lays at his side, a gun rested atop it. A curious sight, given the circumstances.

He frowns.

He should be dead.

But he’s not.

(Why he even thinks this, he has no idea; it’s not like he can place why he would be dead, how he should have died, let alone when or where. He doesn’t even know how he ended up in the middle of the forest instead of at his cabin—wasn’t he cooking a meal? He was busy helping his mother, wasn’t he? Why is he out here, injured and changed the way he is?

(And more importantly, does he even want to know the answer?)

Groaning, he grabs the gun and bag, slipping the bag over his face and checking to see if his gun is loaded.

Empty.

Very well. He needs to get home, anyway—his family is probably worried about him.

* * *

It doesn’t take him long to reach the cabin. He relaxes almost immediately the moment the door closes behind him, looking around the room as though for the first time, as though it were something heavenly instead of something riddled with rotting wood and meat.

He feels like that should bother him.

It doesn’t.

Taking off his coat, maneuvering around the cluttered table with its pot full of flies and putrid-smelling contents ( _dinner_ , he reminds himself, _need to make dinner_ ), he makes his way to the dining room, where his family sits, undisturbed.

He gives each of them a quick hug and kiss on the head—or as best of a kiss as he can, with a bag over his face—as he passes.

None of them react, but he doesn’t think anything of this. They’re probably just distracted.

Much like he should be. He has work to do, after all, and he hasn’t forgotten; he makes his way to the back of the cabin, to his room, where he fumbles around his dresser drawer for the very thing he’s looking for.

He lets out a sound that might’ve been a shout of joy and might’ve been a choked, pained groan the moment his fingers wrap around the bullets hidden away in the drawer, pulling them out and loading his shotgun. The audible _click_ it makes when he’s done helps to lessen the tension in his shoulders, though only just.

Now is not the time to relax; he has work to do.

It’s with this thought that he leaves his bedroom, a bit clumsy in his movements given how he nearly knocks over a lamp in his haste to slip around the door and close it behind him, heading for the back door.

Time for the hunt.

* * *

He never has liked laying bear traps.

They’re loud, dangerous little tools, ones that have threatened to take his fingers off a time or two with that cursed _snap_ of their jaws. His father once told him the importance of bear traps but such a talk escapes him now, the memory gone just as quickly as he’d tried to retrieve it, leaving him yearning for—something. Something he can’t name.

So, he continues placing the traps, knowing that they’re important but still hating them, nonetheless, hoping they catch something worthwhile.

_Dinner_ , his mind reminds him. _You need to make dinner_.

Right. Can’t forget that.

His traps laid, he heads further into the forest, shotgun in hand.

He can always come back later.

* * *

There are cages all around the forest.

He doesn’t quite know what to make of them; he thinks, distantly, that perhaps he had placed them, maybe, or maybe someone he knows (someone important to him, surely, though who they are escapes him before he can put his finger on who exactly he’s reminded of)—but regardless of whether it was he who placed him or someone else, there are cages hanging overhead, ropes protesting lowly as a breeze blows through the tree branches, threatening to snap them clean in two at any moment.

He considers them, curious, glancing over to where a suspiciously-placed crank sits.

He remembers the bear traps.

Traps are important—they help catch game, don’t they?

He makes his way over to the crank, pulling up his sleeves.

_These will work just as well_ , he thinks.

* * *

He catches—something. He’s not actually sure what it is, if he’s being frank.

A tiny, squirming thing, fighting weakly as he releases it from the bear trap latched around its leg and grabs it by the scruff of its neck. It makes a sound—a scream? Cry? Alerting others like it, maybe? Or maybe calling for help—but the sound dies out, the caught animal going limp in his hand.

He studies it for only a moment; trying, perhaps, to place what kind of animal this is. It’s just about hairless, save for its head, and is much tinier compared to other animals he’s seen shambling about in the woods. It’s also covered in this thin, colored fabric, fabric that looks suspiciously like the clothes he wears, which is even stranger. Animals don’t wear clothes.

But still, he’s caught something, something that can be used for food, and so, he takes it back to his cabin all the same.

Maybe he’ll figure out what it is later.

* * *

He gets an idea as he’s preparing the meat. It comes to him after looking to the display seated at the dining table (it’s familiar, somehow, but he’s not sure why; it’s just a bunch of dolls, why should that feel familiar to him?), looking at their stretched skin and the stuffing poking out from their crude stitchwork.

Taxidermy has several uses. Decoration, yes—but study, as well.

What better way to learn about the new animal he’s caught than to study it?

* * *

The taxidermy is finished.

He still has no idea what he’s looking at.

It’s frustrating—he feels like he _should_ know, so why doesn’t he? Why is this so confusing for him?

(What is missing?

(What is he forgetting?

(What is it, what _is_ it, what _is it_ , what’s **wrong** with him **_what is it_** —)

Stuffing and skin flies as he throws the thing across the room, the display breaking into limp, unmoving pieces on the floor. A wounded, startled cry escapes him.

_It’s not right_ , he thinks. _None of this is right._

But if that’s the case, why can’t he figure out what’s _wrong_?

And then…and then the frustration and curiosity fade, and he’s left standing there, breathing heavily, hoarsely, looking around the room like as though he’s never seen it before. Like it was a stranger’s house and not his own.

He…he has something he needs to do. Doesn’t he?

_But what could that be?_

His gaze falls on the shotgun lying idly on the table beside him, the fog hovering over his mind lifting. Not completely, no—but partially.

He picks it up, checking to see if it’s loaded. Snaps it back into place.

He doesn’t look back as he leaves the shed behind.

He has work to do, after all.

(In the dining room of the cabin, piles of meat lie forgotten and rotting.

(He doesn’t remember where it came from, but it does make him think that maybe he needs to do something with it, whatever that might be.

(He decides to leave the mess for later.)

* * *

It’s nighttime when he finds another one of those—things.

This one is different than the one he caught before; a bit shorter and thinner in size, with fur (or hair? He still doesn’t know) just a little longer, hanging over its eyes. This one, too, wears clothes, a blue sweater and grey shorts, a sight that’s illuminated by his lantern.

The animal freezes underneath his lantern’s glow, a sound—a gasp?—escaping its lips.

That single moment of hesitation is more than enough for him to grab it and take it back to his cabin.

* * *

He keeps his catch in the basement.

He was going to kill it immediately, at first. After all, it’s not like he needs a pet—that would be too much work, not to mention messy and tedious. And besides, he needs food, and there’s no need to let good meat go to waste. Why not just shoot it and be done with it?

Well, besides the fact that it needs a little bit of fattening, there is one other reason why that might not be in his best interests.

He just doesn’t realize it until a few hours after he’s made his catch.

* * *

He jerks awake when hears a soft tune play from down below, the gentle music echoing inside the cabin walls and trailing outside the opened windows. He stumbles off his bed, mind foggy and thick with sleep, peeking out of his bedroom door and down the hall. Finding nothing and nobody, he creeps down the hall and down into the basement, a low, gurgling sound rumbling deep within his throat with each step.

He stops when he comes to the animal’s— _is it really an animal?_ —door, peering through its cracks to look inside.

The…whatever it is sits in the middle of the floor, head hanging low so that its hair hides its face and the dark shadows of the room obscure whatever its hair can’t cover. Seated in front of it is a box, a crank turning slowly as it twists it around and around, over and over, filling the home with that soft, comforting melody.

He watches it (them?) from his place outside the door, transfixed. Something within his mind reaches through the fog and touches his consciousness, brief and sharp, startling him in its intensity.

_He lingers in the doorway, watching with a fond smile on his face as a child—that’s it, that’s what they are,_ children _, how could he forget—plays with a music box, giggling and turning to him with a brilliant smile._

_“Papa!” the child calls, holding the box up for him to see, “Papa, look! Look what Mamaw made me!”_

_“I see it,” he tells them, and isn’t that something, speaking. He can’t remember the last time he’s spoken. This version of him walks forward, sitting down next to the child and looking over the music box carefully, rough fingers taking it from small, smooth ones. “You know, when she told me she was going to make one of these things for you, I told her she was full of it. Told her I’d run her out of the house if you wound up keeping me up at night because of it.”_

_The child gasps, pouting a little, “I wouldn’t do that!”_

_“Oh, really? So, you’re telling me that it wasn’t you who woke me up at three in the morning with that banging monkey toy you got from the toy shop across the waters?”_

_The child doesn’t say anything, fidgeting with their hands. “Sorry, Papa. I promise, I won’t do it this time.”_

_“You better not,” he tells them, handing the toy back to them. “Otherwise, I might just have to fight your grandma.”_

_“Grandma would win.”_

_“Traitor.”_

_“I’m right, though.”_

_He sighs, unable to stop the smile that spreads across his face. “Yeah,” he murmurs, “you probably are.”_

The memory fades, and he blinks, flinching back. The fog returns, as heavy as ever as it blankets over his mind, but something remains untouched, clear as day, nestling inside him as though it were its own separate organ.

He knows what he’s missing now. He knows what he’s forgotten.

But that’s okay, because he can fix it. He can make this work. This child, whoever they are, may have been separated by their own father, but he can fill that hole if needed. He can protect them.

He can keep them safe.

Quietly, he heads back up the staircase, lingering just a moment longer as the familiar song washes over him. His resolve hardens.

He won’t let anything happen to them.

_Anything_.

And, that thought in mind, he goes back to his room, grabs his shotgun, and heads outside.

He has work to do.

**Author's Note:**

> This was an impulse-write so I had no idea where this was going to take me, but I'm honestly really happy with how it turned out. I feel like I've really fleshed out some of my thoughts regarding just what-the-fuck-this-game-showed-me, especially in regards to the Hunter's section of the game, so that's nice. 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you all enjoy this! The Teacher will be next, whenever I get to her; thank you for reading and I hope you all are doing well!


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